May 30, 2008

After Talking about my old friend and boss, whose name was Les, I picked up this recent copy of Creative Loafing and to my surprise, there is the slogan right on the cover.

"More with Less" or as Les used to say (mostly to cute girls), "You Get More with Les".

:)

The guy on this cover definitely doesn't look much like Les, who was from the Peoria area, but I suppose the synchronicity of this little event might be a cosmic hint that I need to catch up with Les and see how he's doing these days.

Last I heard he was going into the family insurance business maybe he is selling life or auto insurance today.

Blue the Beagle has raced up the charts and is now gunning for Snoopy's slot in the Fly Like a Beagle Parody featuring the Peanuts cartoon character and beagle, snoopy, as he fights the Red Baron with his flying dog house.

Blue recently featured flying with her ear-wings on a boat in North Carolina, inspired the parody re-write of Fly Like a Beagle, written by Brett Bumeter and performed by the legendary Rich Palmer. Both Brett and Rich hale from Utterz fame after that start up company rapidly raced from a small company out of Boston to take on and surpass MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube in the middle of 2009 helping social networking and video sharing among people around the world to skyrocket in to the stratosphere.

I wasn't paying attention and just ate half a bag of Tostitos. I wasn't looking, just grabbing and thinking that there were still lots in the ag and before you know it, there's nothing left but a couple dozen crumbs.

I have a feature request. I'm noticing that in the midst of your normal whirl wind of updates on Utterz we haven't seen any new player updates in a while.

I used to have a Boss named Less, who always used to say, "You Get More with Less," and when he wasn't saying that, he'd say, "What have you done for me lately?" :)

He was a great guy and a good sales guy too.

Anyway, I'd like to make a request for an audio player with slightly different dimensions. I'm looking/hoping for an audio player for individual Utter posts that can be put into a sidebar on a website. Something with a width of between 250 - 160 pixels.

If you look at this picture, you can see that I took an existing player and basically just resized the width and height down from the normal width (320x 35 I think) to about 250x25.

That was good enough in a pinch, but the text/title of the Utter is kind of lost at that level.

I'm thinking that if the volume button were wrapped down below the progress bar, it would help. Also if the progress bar were less wide and the entire player were taller (maybe as much as 100 or 150 pixels) it would help us to get "more with Less".

btw Les would kick ass a blogger. Not sure what he is up to these days. Last I heard he was in insurance or something. If I know Les, he probably moved into real estate and retired early, but he could sell Celtic jewelry to Viking so anything is possible.

Since Friday, I have been stuck on a programming issue. I have made several baby steps forward through the problem, which represents completely uncharted territory for me.

That is the positive part. Looking back there has been progress, but I have been stuck trying to make those baby steps for hours at a time.

It has been frustrating and aggrovating, but its a problem that I have to solve. So I keep plugging away.

Anyway, I was up to late working on it last night and its time to roll over and get some sleep. I'll worry about the impact on my savings accounts in the morning. There's only so much you can do when you are groggy.

Thanks bloggi, after I wrote that I had the feeling that I was still missing the essence of something but couldn't quite put words on it. This subject has evolved in some tangential directions over the last few years and I guess I'm still wrapping my head around it.

Maybe I need a Martian Mutant to help me figure it out a bit more... It seemed to help Arnold in Total Recall. If that had been a Tarantino movie it would have probably involved more gore and air tools turned into semi automatic weapons or worse.

Regardless, I found this photoshopped image of Samuel Jackson to be relatively funny. :)

I've been working as a blogger for more than a couple years now. Its not all I do, but it is my bread and butter.

That said, its not really about the money. Just because blogging pays my bills, doesn't mean that I don't get a lot more out of it than that.

As a blogger, I get to work my own hours, live where I want to live, travel where I want to travel too, and have a good time when I get there.

Working as a blogger is kind of like working as a professional student. I make a living learning about things, and sharing my wisdom on what I learn. Sometimes, it means that I just goof off too!

Somewhere along the way in working as a blogger, I realized that there is a weird need for bloggers. Now, personally, I do not enjoy blogs that basically regurgitate the news, or even pretend to be reporters. I'm not knocking them, it just does nothing for me.

I do enjoy blogs that are entertaining, create entertainment, are funny, written well, are rich with media, video and audio and help me find or learn interesting things.

I think that is where the sweet spot is for bloggers and that's where I like to try and be myself. Its a journey and not something that I can repeat every day, but its fun to try.

Plus, I like to help show other people how to do this type of thing too! I do believe that there are not enough bloggers.

I think we need at least a million people evolving their skills to become the content creators to eventually replace and upgrade the world of entertainment that we know today. Some of them will become stars, or musicians or comedians or idols, and some will just be notorious gurus that help people.

Regardless we need lots of them to help connect people around the world and help everyone get ahead together. That's the reason why I'm a blogger and why I help other people become bloggers too!

Its not all about the booze at our parties. The food is probably twice as important.

Here I am however, playing with our food, blogging Hunt and Peck style.

(Note the vision in this video is about one third the actual length. The rest is still wrapped up in plastic. It has been temporarily on ice preparing to be eaten tomorrow. These are very large crab legs.)

May 24, 2008

That's easier than the work I should be doing on my own website, but I'll probably get to that late tonight after everyone is asleep.

It always seems to be easier to work on websites for other people.

My wife is a teacher and former painter. She's done photography work on and off throughout the years and is looking to do some more this summer.

So I'm in the middle of rebooting a site for her. The general theme is maybe 70% done as you can kind of tell from the image.

The real work on this one is going to be in getting the content and page layouts worked out. Right now there are none, (some filler with some very sold service rates that are completely not applicable now).

Anyway, rebooting and cleaning up a website has got to be better than rebooting and cleaning up the house in preparation for our Memorial Day Party!

I've been thinking long and hard about how or why I might make a good Utterz ambassador. I considered the feedback that I provide on a daily weekly basis already. I considered the way that I test the system on a regular basis putting Utterz through its paces with a dozen or so blogs. I considered all the time and effort I've put into a tool that makes me a lot of money, and how I'd like to share that wisdom with other people.

Then, I took the cayak out today to clear my head a bit and get focused. I thought back to the early days when I first discovered Utterz. That brought up memories of some of the hard work and almost painful situations that the Utterz team has endured to bring this great tool to all of us.

I specifically remember one incident where Sim dressed up in a Bessie suit at the BlogWorld convention. The poor guy had women coming up to him all day and all night pulling on his Utterz and making the most embarrassing jokes and he good heartedly played right along despite a blush here and there.

But then things got Ugly. Several of us took Sim out and literally set him loose among the wolves, or Coyotes I should say. We turned him loose in a meat market dressed like a cow and these very Ugly Coyote women circled him in packs and pounced upon him numerous times as you can see in this picture.

They literally tore into poor Sim, who probably stands a meager 6' 8" to their 5' 8". He may have out weighed them by a hundred pounds as well, but when you have a pack of Coyotes working in tandem to take down a cow, or at least a nice guy in a cow suite, the poor cow always looses.

And on this particular evening one of our favorite cows, dressed as Bessie and named Sim lost. They ripped the cow skin right off of him. It wasn't enough to strip him down in the meat market like he was just so much meat himself, but then those heartless Coyote's proceeded to drape his Bessie Skin on themselves and dance, and whoop and Holler having a good laugh with everyone in the meat market at Sims expense.

I look back on that time, and would like to take the moment back and spare Sim the pain, but I can't do that.

What I can do is offer myself in Sim's place dressed in a cow suit at Coyote Ugly this year with Coyote Ugly girls pulling on my Utterz, ripping my clothes off and maybe much worse. I could be the Utterz Ambassador to Coyote Ugly in Las Vegas this year. I would do that for Utterz and for Sim and for the community in general so that we can all benefit from Utterz continued success and growth.

About Me

Facebook

NaNoWriMo

This year I'm writing a book, currently title, Infected with Time as part of the National Novel Writing Month event. I'm utilizing two of my favorite software tools to write the book, Dragon Naturally Speaking and MindManager. Wish Me Luck, as the novel gets more organized (writing and editing as I go) I'll start publishing chapters so that you can follow along.